EVENTS

So Cooper and I went for the walk at Asilomar and (then around to Pacific Grove, but the PG library is closed on Mondays and then closed tomorrow because New Year, so I went to Carmel and its library. We took 17 Mile Drive instead of 68 and 1, and we stopped at Fan Shell Beach so that Cooper could hurl himself into the surf. The tide was coming in and I managed to get caught by a high wave and got soaked from the knees down – jeans, socks and shoes. Squelch squelch squelch down Dolores Street to Ocean Avenue and Lincoln Stree, squelch squelch squelch up the steps and into the libe. I got four appetizing books though.

It’s 4:30. The sun sets a little after 5. (Which is so late! In Seattle it sets at 4:15.) Nearly time to leave for the sunset walk to the beach.

Yes travelogue. Usually I’ve got nothin! A month of rain and thick dark clouds. When I go somewhere, I talk about it.

[Prime Minister Manmohan] Singh said on Saturday that he was aware of the emotions the attack had stirred, adding that it was up to all Indians to ensure that the young woman’s death will not have been in vain.

What emotions would those be?

Let’s look again at what happened to her.

On the night of the attack, the woman and a male friend, who also has not been identified, were on a bus after watching a film when they were attacked by six men who raped her. The men beat the couple and inserted an iron rod into the woman’s body, resulting in severe organ damage. [Read more…]

Dam’ fool question. To be nicer to my fellow humans? To see more spooky things? To be a better dualist?

Kevin hints at a similar sort of doubt, but then gives them a reply anyway.

My motivation comes from an unlikely source: the Pope. God’s deputy has taken up Twitter, and he’s surprisingly adept at pontificating in 140 characters or less. Recently, he committed what I consider his first tweet-sin, when he charged atheists with denying human dignity. He wrote, “When you deny God, you deny human dignity. Whoever defends God is defending the human person.” [Read more…]

A member of the hacking group Anonymous broke into the website of Britain’s biggest abortion provider because he “disagreed” with the decisions of two women he knew over their pregnancy terminations, a court heard.

Quite right. Some guy “disagrees” with the decisions that two women made about their pregnancies, so he goes to work to mess up thousands of lives. Because it’s all about him, and his opinions are reason enough to cause harm to thousands of people.

Fortunately he ended up deciding not to publish the details he found by hacking, but not until after he had stolen them.

We’re seeing a lot of this kind of thing. Dude X decides he has a principled hatred of woman Y so by golly he is going to do her harm because he is right and she is wrong. Being right is a license to harm people, according to this way of thinking.

Meanwhile, that “Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk” article that I saw yesterday and meant to read and maybe comment on – that article disappeared on account of how Asher Wolf’s site got hacked. Guess what she and the hacker community needed to talk about.

I know a lot the community doesn’t want to talk about this stuff. I know I didn’t personally try to build a bridge between wannabe-crypto-users and hackers so I could deal with shitful sexism, misogyny and down-right crappy behavior.

I know most people would rather just delete a sexist webpage or image, apologize for the offensive comment, or shitty behavior and move on. Again.

But things aren’t changing for the better. And pasting anti-harassment rules on conference wikis doesn’t seem to be making a dent in obviously unacceptable behavior of some arseholes.

Yes, of course, there are arseholes in all communities. But some communities make sexists, misogynists, harassers and general arseholes truly unwelcome.

Unfortunately, the hacker community seems to flounder at making progress in the area of human relations.

Oh how familiar that sounds. The article is back, on a mirror site. Read it.

Christina Hoff Sommers is appalled at the way people are trying to make boys be more like girls and girls be more like boys.

Say what?

The Reklamombudsmannen (RO) has reprimanded Top-Toy, a licensee of Toys”R”Us and one of the largest toy companies in Northern Europe, for its “outdated” advertisements and has pressured it to mend its “narrow-minded” ways. After receiving “training and guidance” from RO equity experts, Top-Toy introduced gender neutrality in its 2012 Christmas catalogue. [Read more…]

It’s no small thing, of course, to stop a gunman, whatever his size, but there might have been more of a chance with a few men on hand. I asserted that the “feminized setting” that prevails at elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel creates a culture of “helpless passivity” that puts women and small children at risk when a psychopath like Lanza decides to blow out the doors.

And an admiring audience failed to materialize, so she is explaining it all again. [Read more…]